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206 the waters rolling in upon the distant Scottish shore; the murmuring of pines on peaceful Simla hill-sides. The years glide on in pleasurable labour. Rest and retirement are in view. Of a sudden, in that fatal May, the land is smitten by a fiery blast of revolt and anarchy; and life is swallowed up in disaster. Endeavour, success, and disappointment have found in the grave their ending. But the spirit of man survives imperishable; and the purpose of predecessors, such as he was whose life has been traced in these pages, animates the best of those who yet labour in our Indian Empire.

The chief subjects which occupied public thought in India in Mr. Colvin's time exist, little modified, to this hour. Time has strengthened apprehensions as to the North-West frontier. But in 1894, as in 1838, there is conflict of opinion as to the measures necessary to defend it. Indian statesmen of the first rank, Lord Metcalfe and Lord Lawrence, are foremost on the one side; eminent English statesmen, Lord Palmerston, Lord Beaconsfield, on the other. One party hold that a policy of active defiance is inseparable from a policy of aggression, and point to 1838 and 1878; the other asserts that passive expectation, however completely forewarned and forearmed, must end in unquestionable defeat. There are some in England who think, with Lord Palmerston, that the defence of India is 'entirely an Indian question.' In India are many who, if this is to be so, regard the risks from internal discontent